International Symbol of Access

Lore & Background

In the late 1960s, with the rise of universal design, a need grew for a symbol to identify accessible facilities. In 1968, Norman Acton, President of Rehabilitation International, tasked Karl Montan, chairman of the International Commission of Technology and Accessibility, to develop a symbol as a technical aid for presentation at the group's 1969 World Congress convention in Dublin. The project was arranged with the Scandinavian Students Organization at Konstfack's College of Arts. The symbol was designed by Danish design student Susanne Koefoed, who presented an early version at a July 1968 exhibition. Her design depicted a stick figure on a wheelchair, influenced by the contemporary design movement of Scandinavia and Austrian-American designer Victor Papanek.

The committee founded by Montan selected Koefoed's sketch alongside five other symbols. The revised design was modified with the addition of a circle for a head to give the impression of a seated figure, as Montan noted that the equally thick lines could give an impression of a monogram of letters. This change was made without Koefoed's knowledge. The design was made public in 1969 and widely promoted around Sweden. It was approved at the conference, gained prominence through signage created by 3M Corporation, and was later incorporated into the ISO 7001 standard. In 1974, it was formally accepted by the United Nations in an experts' meeting on disability.

Reader's Guide

The International Symbol of Access is significant as a globally recognized marker for improved accessibility, particularly for wheelchair users but also for other disability issues. It denotes the removal of environmental barriers such as steps, which also aids older people, parents with baby carriages, and travelers. The symbol is used to mark parking spaces, vehicles, public lavatories, automatic door buttons, accessible transit stations, and transit routes. Building codes, such as the California Building Code, specify its color requirements. The symbol is 'international' and therefore not accompanied by Braille in any particular language. Universal design aims to obviate such symbols by creating products and facilities accessible to nearly all users from the start. The symbol's legacy includes its incorporation into Unicode as U+267F and its use as an emoji, though Apple's 2016 update replaced the standard symbol with an alternate version depicting an individual exercising control over their life. The Accessible Icon project, launched in 2010 by artists Sara Hendren, Brian Glenney, and Tim Ferguson Sauder, proposed a more dynamic design, which has been adopted in some U.S. states and Canada but rejected by the Federal Highway Administration and the International Organization for Standardization. Critics within the disabled community argue the modified image does not universally represent all disabled people and that the original abstract design leaves more to the imagination.

Did You Know?

• The symbol was designed by Danish design student Susanne Koefoed in 1968.
• The head was added to the stick figure without Koefoed's knowledge to avoid the impression of a monogram.
• The symbol was formally accepted by the United Nations in 1974 at an experts' meeting on disability.
• The Unicode character for the wheelchair symbol (U+267F) was added to Unicode 4.1 in 2005 as part of Emoji 1.0.